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January 31, 2005
DEAN WRAPS IT UP
It looks like Howard Dean has wrapped up a victory in the race for DNC chair. When the members of the Association of State Democratic Chairs voted today, Dean won an overwhelming majority of their votes, as the AP reported this afternoon: the former Vermont governor got 56 votes to 21 for Donnie Fowler, with the party establishment's preferred candidate, ex-Congressman Marty Frost of Texas, trailing badly with just five votes. Former Denver mayor Wellington Webb has just dropped out to endorse Dean, and other candidates may well drop out well before the formal February 12 DNC vote.
Frost's only hope--an affirmative nod from organized labor--is now dashed, as the D.C. labor bureaucrats aren't going to risk creating bad relations with Dean now that he appears to have the job sewed up (and in any case, some of the labor leaders--notably SEIU's Andy Stern and AFSCME's Gerry McEntee--are privately for Dean anyway, because Dean is so popular with their memberships).
Dean's victory is one in the eye for the party elite and its fat-cats--Dean can't be controlled by them, and they're frightened by the way in which his presidential campaign went around the traditional party fundraising fat-cat base to raise $50 million-plus, the lion's share of it from the grassroots and smaller donors by internet.
Will Dean make much of a difference as DNC chair? The way he squandered all that money he raised, only to win just his home state, isn't encouraging in management terms. Worse, the scuttlebutt in Washington among those who've talked to Dean and his people is that he intends to keep on the DNC staff assembled by Terry "the bagman" McAuliffe, the outgoing DNC chair. That's deplored by party technicians who don't consider the McAuliffe staff up to snuff.
In any case, it will take more than a technical fix to right what's wrong with the national Democrats. A recent poll showed a 12-point drop in the party's favorability rating among Democrats since the election--reflecting the disillusionment of the party base with the party elites' centrist drift. In their weekly conference call, the mayvens who run the Democratic 527 extra-party groups are--our spies tell us--talking about planning for taking back state legislatures so they, and not the Republicans, will control the gerrymandering after the next census. There's little of "the vision thing' in such technocratic strategizing. Will Dean, who has ever proclaimed himself a "centrist" with a "healthy distrust' of the left as well as the right, be the man to steer the party to a new, moblizing course and message? I'm not holding my breath.
Posted by Doug Ireland at 04:45 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Jay, mathematically speaking, and from the perspective of voter education, IRV is dumb.
How do you explain to voters that ranking a candidate #1 may cause them to lose?
The mathematics of voting are from Social Choice theory, a part of Game Theory. There is no perfect election system (Arrow's Theorem) but IRV is just dumb (non-monotonic, only one step up from our current system).
www.Condorcet.org
www.ElectionMethods.org
Posted by: Josh Narins | Feb 3, 2005 4:58:56 PM
Go NonPlussed!
Posted by: Josh Narins | Feb 3, 2005 4:56:33 PM
To Salvatore Marelli: You are sooo wrong. There is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. They are one in the same, part of the same duopoly. IRV will solve the problem and give people a choice. Check out www.gp.org and look for yourself.....
Posted by: Jay | Feb 1, 2005 4:56:00 PM
I am glad to see Dean get the chairmanship, and think that his work will be good.
As for Terry's staff not being up to snuff, I would remind you that Terry's staff is a hell of a good money raising machine. Elections require money. Dean's own methods will add to this.
I would remind all that the only way to effectively take back the Congress is to take back the states. So, what is wrong with a foundations up restoration of the party?
The Democrats are THE only workable alternative to the madness of the Bushist policies, and the weirdness of the Republican Congress. Third parties and the Greens arn't going to do anything except tip the elections to Republicans, realistically that is all they can do.
Posted by: Salvatore Marelli | Feb 1, 2005 9:20:09 AM
Why all the focus on "centrism", "right wing", "left wing", and on and on? Howard Dean is a hard core POPULIST, and that is precisely what the Democratic party needs. His plan is to start at the local level, and empower local candidates at all levels of public office, rather than the current corporate top down approach. If the Howard Dean naysayers can come up with a better candidate for DNC chair, I would like to see him or her. This has nothing to do with being "progressive enough" or "liberal enough" or anything else. It has to do with populism verses good-old-boy corporate style cronyism, which is what has completely taken over the Republicanazi party and has severly tainted and weakened the Democratic party.
Posted by: Red State Deaniac | Feb 1, 2005 9:00:42 AM
Democrats have already taken back a slim majority of state legislative seats nationally based on grassroots organizing modeled after the Dean campaign. I'm betting Dean will build on that and so are State Party Chairs.
So tell us, exactly what's so great about Mr. Fowler, Gore's ex-field-director? (now there was a campaign to be proud of). Or Martin Frost,Texas Republican-Lite Dixiecrat centrist? Or Mr. Roemer: anti-abortion, pro-gun social conservative centrist? Or centrist DLC ex-bagman, Simon Rosenberg. Or, I know, how about we nominate Georgia centrist Zig Zag Zell Miller; then we wouldn't have to have a separate party at all. He could just pitch our candidates directly to the next Republican convention.
Posted by: nonplussed | Feb 1, 2005 2:30:44 AM
Dean's policies may run to the centrist, but progressives love him because he manages to empower them, IMO. Republicans win on ideology, organization and turnout. I think Dean provides all three from his pulpit as Chair. I agree he was a spendthrift during the campaign, but his subscriber base is larger than it was the day he dropped out, and his organization turned away from the centers of power and diffused it. One of the people DFA supported was Tom Potter, a former police chief of Portland who was challenging a sitting Commissioner for Mayor who held a 1mil kitty. Potter took no money over $25 for the entire primary, which is an open runoff. Not only did he prevent the Commissioner from earning a majority and winning outright, not only did he earn himself a spot in the final election--he outpolled the Commissioner in the first round. The guy never recovered, and Tom Potter is one of the unlikeliest stories of this year's elections. Maybe Hubert Vo in Texas is bigger.
Channeled energy wins elections. Dean provides that. He's not going to put on a wizard cap, and it may not happen overnight, but he's 100% right: build the party, build the party, build the party. To build you have to start out with nothing but dirt.
Posted by: Torrid | Feb 1, 2005 12:59:38 AM
I don't think the charge that Dean 'squandered' campaign funds is a fair one. Based on how Iowa went, he had to quickly set up infrastructure in numerous target states and hit the ground running. A lot was invested on an assumption that didn't pan out but that's the way it goes sometimes. In hindsight when Dean weighed the efficacy of getting Gore's endorsement early and went for it, the miscalculation was that he'd be able to shake off the dogpile. As we know, Gep threw his base to Kerry and that was the end of that.
Posted by: Maezeppa | Jan 31, 2005 10:26:03 PM
That's why I am a Green. The Democrats have absolutely no backbone. And I live in Vermont; Deano weren't no liberal at all.
Posted by: Jay | Jan 31, 2005 7:51:25 PM
It is fun to see the party leadership take one on the chin but it is hard to see Dean and his "centrist" ideas turning the Democratic party away from its slide to permanent also-ran status.
I can't see the Democrats as a real solution to any of the serious problems America has created for itself.
Posted by: Thomas McCay | Jan 31, 2005 7:20:38 PM
